Upon nursing care of a bedridden aged person or an ailing person (hereinafter, collectively abbreviated as the care-receiver), a transferring task between a wheelchair and a bed is a heavy burden on a caregiver. In order to reduce the burden on the caregiver, there is a combination bed in which a part of the bed is separated so as to be transformed into a wheelchair.
Such a combination bed is composed of combining a bed main body portion and a wheelchair in a flat posture. In order to combine the wheelchair with the bed main body portion, there is a need for laterally placing the wheelchair in the flat posture alongside the bed main body portion without any gap inbetween. For a purpose of laterally placing the wheelchair alongside the bed main body portion without any gap inbetween, a wheelchair capable of laterally moving is proposed (for example, refer to Patent Literature 1).
FIGS. 6A and 6B are side views of a conventional wheelchair 1. FIG. 6A is a side view of the wheelchair 1 at the time of normal use, and FIG. 6B is a side view of the wheelchair 1 at the time of omnidirectional movement. The wheelchair 1 has casters 2 on the front side (on the left side in FIGS. 6A and 6B), has traveling wheels 3 in the center, and has casters 4 on the rear side (on the right side in FIGS. 6A and 6B). Although the directions of the casters 2, 4 can be changed to an arbitrary direction, the direction of the traveling wheels 3 cannot be changed. As shown in FIG. 6A, in the case where the care-receiver is moved by this wheelchair 1 at a time of normal use, the casters 2 and the traveling wheels 3 are grounded. At the time, the casters 4 are not grounded but slightly floated up from the ground. When the wheelchair 1 travels with the combination of the casters 2 and the traveling wheels 3, due to the fixed traveling direction of the traveling wheels 3, the wheelchair can stably travel without shifting in the left and right directions. As shown in FIG. 6B, in this wheelchair 1, when a movable frame operating handle 5 is pulled up, the casters 4 are grounded, so that the traveling wheels 3 are floated up. When the traveling wheels 3 are floated up by manually moving the movable frame operating handle 5, the wheelchair is supported only by the casters 2, 4 so as to be movable in a direction (the lateral direction) perpendicular to the traveling direction. Thereby, the wheelchair 1 can be laterally placed alongside the bed main body portion.